Miller Hall: If the Walls Could Talk

story and photography by Olivia Russo

It’s the late 1940s, and curfew at Miller Hall is 10 p.m. sharp. Imogene Hanawalt has planned a small party to celebrate her birthday with friends in her room at La Verne College’s all-women’s dormitory, and she’s hoping her boyfriend can join them. But Dwight Hanawalt will need to find a creative way to sneak past the dorm mother’s watchful eye.

All the doors are locked, but Dwight is determined to see his girlfriend blow out her birthday candles. But how? Remove the hinges from one of the doors? No, he’s got to be quiet this time. Thankfully, the dorm’s ivy-covered walls give him another option, and when he successfully climbs to Imogene’s second-floor window, she helps him inside to join the party.

Chances are, Dwight wasn’t the first to scale those walls under the cover of darkness. Even before he snuck into his future wife’s party, Miller Hall likely had a few stories to tell, beginning with it’s own birthday in 1917.

What is now the University of La Verne was originally housed in another structure—the Lordsburg Hotel—a three-story building that hosted all classes and meetings. In 1917, Samuel J. Miller, president of what was then the Lordsburg Academy, proposed the construction of a new women’s dormitory and administration building. The proposal was approved and an architect drew up plans for not only the dorm, but for a total of six new buildings to be added to the campus.

The school needed to raise $100,000 (about $2.5 million today) to start construction on the buildings, but they were only able to raise 69% (about $1.7 million today) of that amount. The academy’s board decided to proceed with the construction of just the women’s dorm, later known as Miller Hall, which was completed before the 1918 fall semester.

“There’s this big fireplace in the lobby,” recalls alumna Yvonne Belcher, looking back on her days as a student. “Kids would sit around the floor and play cards and talk. And there was a piano up there, too.”

The sides of the building on the first and second floors were originally screened-in porches where students slept to beat the heat.

“During freshman year, my room was in the basement of Miller Hall,” Evelyn Harlbut shared in an oral history interview with retired ULV professor Al Clark in 2016. “It was on the same floor as the cafeteria and the laundromat. But they had the screened-in porches at the end, where we could sleep, so you just made sure you had good warm blankets during the cold times, and you could sleep in the fresh air.”

In the basement dining hall—known as The Spot—students would gather for meals in shifts, as the room was not big enough for everyone to fit in at one time. The kitchen staff would prepare food and place it on tables for students to serve themselves.

“It was not a cafeteria. It was family-style eating,” Virginia Stark said in a conversation with Al Clark. “We’d all sit around the tables, with six or eight at a table. They’d put a big bowl of food out, and we’d help ourselves, just like how it was at home.”

Students needing money for tuition or other expenses could work in the kitchen or the dining hall preparing meals or setting tables.

Smudge pots

Citrus groves were abundant in La Verne and surrounding towns when Belcher attended the college. Young men from the school often worked in the groves to help pay their tuition. In winter months, that often meant smudging, in which oil in round pots with tall chimneys would be burned to create a layer of smoke over orchards in an attempt to protect the trees from frost.

“During smudging, the air was smoky and yucky, so when we knew they were going to have to smudge, we would bring our beds in and sleep in the hall or in our rooms,” Belcher said.

Things changed in 1959 when Miller Hall became a dormitory for men. Women had moved a few years earlier to Studebaker-Hanawalt Hall which was built in 1956. Bob Dyer recalls one of his first days at the school when members of the sophomore class told freshmen to stand in front of Miller Hall for a picture. While posing, Dyer noticed a friend gripping the hand railing like he was bracing himself for something. Suddenly, a flood of water came crashing over them from above. Freshman baptism—courtesy of the sophomores. Welcome to La Verne College!

An uncertain future

Things took a dramatic turn for Miller Hall in May 1977 when students were no longer allowed to live there. It turns out the dorm was not up to current earthquake standards, and would be closed after that spring semester.

For the next seven years, the fate of Miller Hall remained up in the air. The once picturesque layer of ivy that Dwight Hanawalt used to climb to his girlfriend’s second-floor window had grown like kudzu, covering the walls in a thick, unkempt mat. The abandoned building became a makeshift storage facility.

During this time, administrators discussed plans with a Newport Beach architecture firm to build two separate residence halls, with one to be constructed where Miller Hall stood. By winter break of 1984, as construction details were being finalized, the university prepared to salvage anything of value before demolition of Miller Hall was to begin. “University officials are planning to evict Miller Hall’s tenants—rats, spiders, cockroaches, fleas and other assorted creatures,” Laura Deal wrote in a Campus Times article.

However, a few weeks later, plans were deferred due to the inability to secure loans for construction, delaying demolition until summer.

Meanwhile, university alumni and a local group called S.O.L.V.E. (Save Old La Verne’s Environment) began protesting the destruction. They believed that Miller Hall should be declared a historical landmark. Their efforts paid off. By November 1985, the university put a halt to their demolition plans, and Miller Hall was spared.

Next steps included not only bringing the building up to earthquake code, but also other major renovations, including painting the exterior, turning the screened porches into enclosed rooms, and modernizing the interior. The building would no longer be a dormitory, but would henceforth be used for classrooms, office space, and a new photography department and gallery. By the summer of 1990, the work was complete. Today, students may take classes in rooms where alumni once slept, or browse photographs in a gallery just down the hall from where students once squeezed into the tiny dining hall.

No one is climbing ivy to reach Miller Hall’s second floor anymore—that ivy was removed long ago. But that dining hall—The Spot—well, they say some things never change. The original Spot was the mealtime gathering place for some 40 years until the school built a new facility just north of Miller Hall. Davenport Dining Hall opened in 1958, and served students and faculty for nearly 60 years until a sprawling new buffet-style hall replaced it in August 2018. They could have called it anything. But, when it came time to name the new dining hall, someone with a sentimental heart came up with the perfect suggestion: The Spot.